395
this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2023
395 points (98.5% liked)
politics
18878 readers
3804 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The US was originally envisioned as a federation of independent states, and the Constitution reflects that. Our elections are all run by the states. The states select their senators and representatives to send to the federal legislature. The states select the President.
In fact, originally, our senators were selected by the state legislatures, not a statewide election.
Even today, the popular vote doesn't really matter in the Presidential election. Those elections simply inform the state how to appoint electors to the Electoral College. Some states are "all or nothing", some states appoint them proportional to the popular vote.
As such, how those representatives and senators are chosen is left to the individual states, and how the elections are run is the domain of the state.
The Constitution specifically delegates that authority to the States, though, it includes a provision that the federal legislature can claw back that authority in whole or in part by simply writing new laws. The Voting Rights Act, for a great many years, demanded that the various racist states in the South had to have changes to their election process vetted by the Courts before being implemented. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court, under Chief Justice Roberts, declared racism was over and gutted that requirement. That's when you started to see a bunch of this tomfuckery.
Interesting, thanks for that. I'll do more research to understand the American context.